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Monday, October 26, 2009

Bedrock Samples

Whether it's Nature Study or Geology, it's great having an environmental engineer for an aunt (my sister-in-law.) Not only does she know all the plants in the area, she gives you gifts like pike hammers and bedrock samples. These arrived today. She included an informational sheet as well as a pamphlet about Rhode Island bedrock, complete with a geological map!

These bedrock core samples are the metamorphic rock gneiss formed from granite, distinguishable by its distinct banding. It contains quartz (clear to gray), biotite (black banding), and feldspar (pink.) Some samples may contain flecks of pyrite (Fool's gold.)

The samples are best viewed wet. Why? Think of clear plastic wrap--when you crinkle it, it becomes white because the light is reflected by the countless surfaces it now has. The uneven rock surface (even though these are pretty smooth from the drill) is "smoothed out" by water and so the colors are more intense. This is similar to polishing rocks.

All of these pieces come from the same core sample beginning at about 40 feet deep. Each piece is marked with the depth at which that piece started. The breaks come from pockets of ground water. You can clearly see how the stone changes with depth. Yoou can't tell in these pictures but the deeper stone clearly contains a lot more feldspar than the more superficial stone, which has more biotite banding.

Your geology posts are fabulous!How wonderful that your SIL could get you all started off with the equipment .. and a pile of motivation. Well, you've spread some motivation over our way. I'll be visiting these pages again when we come back to geology (wink!)Catherine (aka: alecat)

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On Science, Learning, and Faith

"Books dealing with science as with history, say, should be of a literary character, and we should probably be more scientific as a people if we scrapped all the text-books which swell publishers' lists and nearly all the chalk expended so freely on our blackboards."Charlotte MasonA Philosophy of Education

"Some teachers may give a live lesson from a stuffed specimen, and other teachers may stuff their pupils with facts about a live specimen; of the two, the former is preferable."Anna Botsford ComstockHandbook of Nature Study

“Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.”

Pope John Paul II

"Beautiful is what we see.More beautiful is what we understand.Most beautiful is what we do not comprehend."Bl. Nicolas StenoFounder of modern geology

"Go my Sons, burn your books and buy stout shoes, climb the mountains, search the valleys, the deserts, the sea shores, and the deep recesses of the earth...Observe and experiment without ceasing, for in this way and no other will you arrive at a knowledge of the true nature of things." Petrus Severinus16th century Danish alchemist

"All this propaganda for literacy of one sort or another comes from people who believe that everyone should share their particular views of what the most important knowledge is and what conclusions should be drawn from it; in other words, they want others to be indoctrinated."Henry H. BauerScientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method

"Furthermore, and contrary to popular belief, the Church never supported the idea that the earth is flat, never banned human dissection, never banned the zero, and certainly never burnt anyone at the stake for scientific ideas."James HannamThe Genesis of Science